Description:

• Perennial, tufted, basal sheaths sometimes swollen into bulbs
• Leaf blade expanded or almost filiform; ligule an unfringed membrane
• Inflorescence a panicle, contracted, spike-like, dense and cylindrical, often interrupted; spikelets solitary, pedicelled
• Spikelet 3.5-4.0 mm long, shining, laterally compressed, disarticulating above glumes; glumes ± equal to unequal, ± equal to longer than spikelet, lower sometimes shorter than spikelet, herbaceous, oblanceolate, linear or lanceolate-linear, acute, keeled, hairy or glabrous, with hyaline margins, sometimes mucronate; lower glume usually 1-nerved; upper glume 1-3-nerved
• Florets 2-4, bisexual or uppermost floret reduced and sterile; lemma 3-5 mm long, longer than glumes, similar in texture to glumes, 3-nerved, keeled, acute to acuminate, entire, sometimes with a mucro or awned (usually minute); palea projecting and conspicuous in mature spikelet, linear or narrowly lanceolate, subacute, 2-keeled, 2-toothed, thinner in texture than lemma, hyaline
• Lodicules 2, hyaline, glabrous
• Stamen 3
• Ovary glabrous; styles distinct, plumose
• x = 7 (aneuploids, high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Koeleria Pers.
  • Persoon: 97 (1805)
  • Stapf: 468 (1899)
  • Stent: 301 (1924)
  • Chippindall: 83 (1955)
  • Clayton: 79 (1970)
  • Launert: 69 (1971)
  • Humphries: 218 (1980)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 127 (1986)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 193 (1990)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 515 (1994).

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 35-60, temperate regions throughout the world, montane regions of tropical and subtropical Africa
• Southern Africa: Species 1: Koeleria capensis (Steud.) Nees, mainly high eastern regions, not in Namibia and Botswana